


Mirror Images

by poisontaster



Series: Heart 'Verse [26]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Consensual Underage Sex, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, POV Outsider, Secret Relationship, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-17
Updated: 2006-06-17
Packaged: 2018-05-16 23:16:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5844784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"People see what they want to see. What they expect. And lets face it; most of the time, expectations are low." When you look at it like that, that's almost as good as a confession.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror Images

**Author's Note:**

> I've always liked the technique of an 'outside looking in' perspective on relationships; illuminating the things that are often unseen or unnoticed by the people in the relationship. Plus I had some more to say about Emma and Deacon. I am so pathetically grateful to inlovewithnight and shadow_walker3 for coming through in a pinch to edit this for me. They are both true and wonderful friends. All remaining screw-ups are firmly at my door.

"No, look." Impatient, Emma elbows Deacon in the neck as she slithers up in the cramped confines of the bed to point. "Right there. John, Mary and Dean. _Dean_."

Deacon stares and she feels a spike of impatience. "Well that's got to be a coincidence, right?"

"Hell of a coincidence," Emma says. She feels obscurely gleeful. "I mean…how likely is that?"

"Becks went out with that guy that had the same birthday as dad. That was pretty creepy."

"The same _birthday_. Not the same _name_ ," Emma points out. She's starting to slide off sideways and so she angles her body to overlap Deacon's. He puts out an absent hand, pulls her closer and angles himself until they're like a little teepee in the middle. His hand stays where it is, rubs the small of her back, though he never looks up from the birth announcement. "It's weird, right? Don't you think it's weird?"

Deacon snorts. "Yeah, it's weird," he agrees. "But it doesn't prove anything. Certainly not what _you're_ thinking of, you perv."

"I don't think anything," Emma says, looking the blurry printout with greedy eyes.

***

"Oh God, Em, not more," Deacon groans, looking over her shoulder.

"Shut up, shut up!" she hisses, tugging his wrist to pull him down into the adjoining seat. "Do you have to be so loud about everything?"

"S'part of my charm," he says and sprawls out, putting his legs in her lap.

"I hate to break it to you, brother-mine, but you're not charming."

"I beg to differ."

"Mmm, you know I love it when you beg," she answers sarcastically, absently massaging his ankle where it crosses her thigh.

Deacon sits a while, desultorily paging through one of her camouflage books; something long and dry cataloguing the different names for water demons of the old South. In her lap, his feet tap restlessly.

Finally: "So what is it today?"

"Obituaries. Says here that Dean Winchester died in St. Louis in 2005."

"See? What did I tell you?" Deacon asks, twitching his legs out of her lap and leaning forward across the table instead. His fingers loosely encircle her wrist. "Now would you please stop all this…" he waves his other hand, "obsessiveness and come throw knives with me? That's what we came here for. Or don't you care about that any more?"

She just looks at him. After a minute his ears flame red. "Okay, I didn't mean that," he mumbles, ashamed. "But still…Em. What the fuck? Where are you _getting_ all this? And why do you care, anyway? If they're queer for each other, then that means you don't have to worry about your pretty pink ass. Not like when we…"

He's not stupid. She knows he's not stupid, but sometimes Deacon can _act_ very stupid. "Deacon, if you do not shut up, I swear on the souls of our family I will shave every hair off your body when you are sleeping."

"Hey!" His hand jerks towards his head reflexively. He knows she'll do it. Which is what makes it a good threat, when all's said and done. Emma's not a big believer in empty threats. Why bother, then?

"Besides," she says fast, to cover the burgeoning hurt on his face, "it's a fake."

"Okay, now how do you know that?"

"Because I've also got the police case file."

"Emma!" Deacon mimes shock, which makes her smile despite herself. "You _sleuth_."

Emma shoves him. He's impossible to stay mad with, the idiot. "You don't even know what that word _means_ ," she grumbles. She pushes the Xeroxes and notes in his direction. "Look, though."

Deacon leans over to look and she knows she's got him. Deacon never can resist a good mystery. And that's good, that's as it should be.

It's not like she's not doing this for both of them.

***

Once she's started, it kind of scares her, how easy this is.

It's a lot like hunting. She wonders if they realize that. If they know.

In a way, it only increases her respect for them; that they've been teaching her what she wants— _needs_ —to know from the very beginning. It's like everything else; it just took her a while to understand. How it all fit together.

 _It's all about attitude,_ Dean said, talking about grift and impersonation. _People see what they want to see. What they expect. And lets face it; most of the time, expectations are_ low.

Or, as Sam would say, _You don't see it because you don't want to see it._

And fuck her, but they're right. Because when you look at it like that, that's almost as good as a confession.

Not quite good enough, though.

***

Somehow Deacon gets the drop on her, the sneak, tackling her hard. They go flying, sliding along the slimy layer of mud. Deacon wrestles her onto her back and straddles her legs, panting and grinning in triumph. "Gotcha."

"I found a picture," she says, blinking the rain out of her eyes.

Deacon stares at her for a minute before it penetrates. "Really? And…it's definitely him?"

She nods, then pushes him with muddy hands. "Get off me, you oaf," she growls, slithering out from under him. "It's blurry, and they're in the background, but it's definitely _them._ "

Deacon gets up and puts his hand out to help her up. From anyone else, she'd kick them in the balls first, but it's Deacon, so she accepts it and he pulls her up. He must have hit her harder than she thought, because she's a little wobbly. Deacon puts his arm around her and she rests her forehead on his shoulder, breathing hard. "Where'd you find it?" he asks.

"Yearbook from Sarasota Springs," she answers quietly. "Had to spend both our mad money to get it, but it was worth it."

Deacon didn't say anything about her spending up his money in addition to hers, but she knew he wouldn't. Instead his arm just tightens around her waist and she lets her fingers curl into his belt loop, feeling like these are the first breaths she's taken in hours. "Are you done yet?" he asks finally.

She nods. "Almost."

Deacon's other arm goes around her and they just stand like that for a while until the rain dripping down her neck becomes too cold and annoying to ignore. To cheer them both up, she says, "What's say we go see if we can ambush the others?"

"We're on opposite teams, Em."

She looks up into his face—and when did he get taller than her? "We're never on different teams, Deac."

***

It takes her a while to find the opportunity. So long, she'd almost think Sam was avoiding her, but she knows his spook tricks don't extend to mind reading, and even if they did, she doesn't believe Sam would do that.

It's kind of weird, that realization. She didn’t think she had much trust left for anyone besides Deacon. It makes her uncomfortable and she starts to worry that she's slipping. That she's losing her edge.

In sparring practice that day, she finagles to get paired against Hari—who has nearly as many issues as they do—and she manages to put the other girl on her ass. Twice. Hari bares her teeth at her the second time and asks, "Got something to prove, hon?"

"Don't we all?" Emma asks, just as sweet.

But she feels better after that.

***

She finally gets her chance totally by accident, which just goes to show. She's out running on one of the hill trails—for a change without Deacon, who wanted another two hours communion with the pillow—when she runs into Sam, out doing the same thing.

"Hey," she says, reversing direction and falling into step with him without a second thought.

"Hey," he says right back, and even though his hair is all wet and pointy with sweat, he doesn't really sound out of breath.

She's planned and rehearsed for this moment a lot, but now that it's here, she finds herself oddly tongue tied. Her reasons for digging into his and Dean's past—while still valid—seem intrusive and sort of mean. She imagines what it must be like, to pretend all the time. Or really, to have been pretending for _this long_ , because she's _been_ pretending.

She wonders when it started, and how and if it really matters to them anymore.

She's so busy thinking and staring and stewing about it all, that she isn't watching where she's going and she trips right over a big old rock about half buried in the trail. "Dammit!" she shouts and then Sam's kneeling in front of her, carefully peeling her track pants back from the bleeding scrape.

"It's not too bad," he says, squirting it with some of the water from his bottle.

"I know," she says and Sam must know she's talking about something else entirely, because his eyes come up to hers. "I know about you and Dean," she clarifies.

Sam settles back on his heels, a narrow and somehow dangerous look on his face that makes her swallow reflexively, even though she doesn't _really_ think he'd hurt her. Or she hopes not.

"What do you know about me and Dean?" he asks, and even his voice sounds growling and deadly.

"I won't tell," she says quickly. "I… I know why you did it. Why you hide it. I get that. He's your brother, you can't…"

Sam's arms close on her upper arms hard, and _Jesus_ , she didn't know he could move that fast. "Shut up," he grits, "shutup, shutup, shut. Up!"

Emma feels like her eyes are going to peel right out of the sockets, and if she'd been thinking, she's have used the shoulder block and roll Dean taught her to get out of Sam's punishing grip, but instead, she just finds herself babbling, "I just want to know! I just…you have to tell me, I have to _know_ , Sam, you don't understand…"

Sam's eyes close and he takes a deep breath before carefully and deliberately opening his fingers. Her arms smart and she knows she'll have bruises from this later. "What don't I understand?" he asks, still not looking.

"I don't want… I won't tell, Sam. I'll burn everything I found, I swear…I already erased the records I could find, but I have to know."

"Know what?"

"How you did it." She swallows hard again, her throat feeling like its steadily garroting shut. Her heart's beating so hard she thinks even Sam has to hear it. Can't he see how important this is? Can't he tell? Sometimes it feels like her head's going to explode with it, or her heart, just blow its messy way out of her chest. "Teach me how you kept people from knowing. Twenty years…me and Deac…I have to know. I love him so much. We don't… We can't… Please, Sam, I'll do anything."

"Oh God," Sam whispers, and puts his head in his hands. "Oh God."

***

"It would ruin us," Sam says, knees kilted to his chest, elbow braced against knee, forehead in hand. "You know that, right? They… God, they would take Chelsea away from him. _Us_. They'd take all of you away."

Emma shakes her head. "I'm sorry," she says. She's crying. She hasn't cried since…since she and Deacon came home That Day. But she's crying now. Because she _understands_.

The fear. The fear that permeates every waking moment; that you've touched or looked too long. That you've somehow given yourself away, that someone will know. That you'll be separated, to wither and die alone, deprived of the one thing that gives you life. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry, Emma," Sam says harshly. " _Forget._ Forget this ever happened, forget what you…what you _think_ you know…"

Emma's chin squares, her face comes up. "I know," she says, sharper than before, "and I have proof." Sam flinches and she feels kind of shitty about it, but she presses on. "I just want you to teach me, Sam. Help me—help _us_ —figure out how to do what you and Dean did. You have to understand…you have to. Because we're… I need him. We need each other and if they separate us again…"

"Emma, calm down." Sam rakes a hand through his hair, getting mud in the brown strands. "No one's going to separate you and Deacon."

Emma's hands cover her mouth, trying to hold in the wild paroxysm of joy that goes through her at his words. She's better than this. Colder. Emma gropes for the fractured edges of that personality, floundering desperately in a sea of _what if_ and _if only_.

"How…how did you…" Sam pauses. He won't look at her, that muddy hand still buried in his hair and again she feels that uncharacteristic pang of guilt, because he and Dean have done so much for her and Deacon and this seems a horrible way to repay it. "What made you think Dean and I are brothers?"

And she likes that. Careful. Still careful. She makes a mental note, because someday this could be her. _Forever,_ Deacon says, when it's just them and he traces her lips with his thumb. But forever is easy to say and much harder to do. She has to learn the _do_.

Emma shrugs. "I don't know. I just… I think I always knew. Because you look at each other the way me and Deacon do. Because…I could see it was the same. That we're the same."

Sam smiles. It's crooked and not at all happy. "Well, I love him," he says softly. "That's how you look at someone when you love them."

"No." Emma shakes her head. "I mean… _yes_ , but… I don't know how it's different, but it just is. It's… _more_ than that, somehow."

"Hmm." Sam's lips purse. "You've never been tested, have you? For…spook abilities?"

"No." Emma shakes her head again. Her foot grits restlessly in the stony mud of the trail. The wet coldness is soaking through her pants and panties, but she doesn't care.

"Well, maybe you should be."

Emma shrugs. "Okay."

Suddenly Sam's looking at her, hazel eyes really bright against the gray dullness of the day. He blinks and she realizes he's got water—not even really tears—in his eyes. "Why didn't you go to Dean? He's your…mentor, for lack of a better word."

Emma shivers. It's not from the cold. "Because I was afraid he'd kill me, if he knew I knew. And I'm good, but I'm not as good as him."

Sam laughs, quiet but heartfelt and after a moment, Emma laughs with him, shaky and slightly sick now that she's laid her cards out on the table. She's exposed, she knows and for all Sam and Dean's position is as precarious as her and Deacon's, they're adults and she and Deacon are still just looked at as kids. Juvenile delinquents at that. Sam and Dean could really hurt them, if they wanted.

"There's nothing he wouldn't do for you," Emma says seriously.

Sam's smile fades and he sighs. She remembers suddenly that it's always Sam who demonstrates the finer points of knife play and throwing. He's wicked fast and twice as deadly. "Yeah. I know. It goes both ways, Emma."

***

_Epilogue._

Dean looks over his shoulder when he feels someone coming up behind him; relaxes when he sees it's just Sam. "Hey," he says, feeling the grin break out on his face.

"Hey," Sam answers. He comes to stand just behind Dean in the doorway, closer than they normally stand in public—not that Dean's necessarily complaining. Sam's just gotten out of the shower; his hair's still wet and curling up at the ends and he smells like his girly shower gel. Him and his damn 'dry skin'. "What's going on?"

Dean nods towards the knot of kids in the practice room. "Sparring. S'too wet to get good traction outdoors." He watches them—the kids—step and move against each other. It reminds him of when it was him and Sam under Dad's watchful and critical eye. "Look at 'em, man," he whispers to Sam, tilting his head back a little. "Hari's going to go through those monsters like goddamned greased lightning." He looks at the twins, Deacon and Emma, like silent deadly ghosts, working in the kind of tandem it took him and Sam _years_ to find. "And Emma and Deacon… Man." He shakes his head and lifts his water bottle to his mouth.

Sam stirs, leaning in a little closer so that the puff of his breath drifts past Dean's ear and gives him goose bumps on the back of his neck. "Emma and Deacon," Sam murmurs softly, "are fucking."

There might have been something else he said, but Dean can't hear it over his own sputter and choke as the water goes down the wrong way.


End file.
